Que s’est-il passé à bord du vol Dubaï-Paris avant son crash dans le massif alpin ? Technicien au BEA, autorité responsable des enquêtes de sécurité dans l’aviation civile, Mathieu Vasseur est propulsé enquêteur en chef sur une catastrophe aérienne sans précédent. Erreur de pilotage ? Défaillance technique ? Acte terroriste ? L’analyse minutieuse des boîtes noires va pousser Mathieu à mener en secret sa propre investigation. Il ignore encore jusqu’où va le mener sa quête de vérité...
On August 24, 1981, the newlyweds Larisa and Vladimir Savitsky stepped on board the plane following the flight Komsomolsk-on-Amur - Blagoveshchensk. 30 minutes before landing, the civilian aircraft AN-24 collided with another aircraft and broke into pieces at an altitude of more than 5 kilometers above the ground. No one was supposed to survive ... but a miracle happened. Larisa Savitskaya woke up in the middle of the wreckage of the plane in the impenetrable taiga. Now she herself had to create a real miracle, which only a strong-minded person is capable of.
In the 1930s, once-great World War I pilot Roger Shumann performs as a daredevil barnstorming pilot at aerial stunt shows while his wife, LaVerne, works as a parachutist. When newspaper reporter Burke Devlin arrives to do a story on the Shumanns’ act, he quickly falls in love with the beautiful--and neglected--LaVerne.
In 1966, Dieter Dengler was shot down over Laos, captured, and, down to 85 pounds, escaped. Barefoot, surviving monsoons, leeches, and machete-wielding villagers, he was rescued. Now, near 60, living on Mt. Tamalpais, Dengler tells his story: a German lad surviving Allied bombings in World War II, postwar poverty, apprenticed to a smith, beaten regularly. At 18, he emigrates and peels potatoes in the U.S. Air Force. He leaves for California and college, then enlistment in the Navy to learn to fly. A quiet man of sorrows tells his story: war, capture, harrowing conditions, escape, and miraculous rescue. Where did he find the strength; how does he now live with his memories? The director would use this subject for the feature film Rescue Dawn (2007).
From the crash of Air France flight 447 between Rio and Paris into the Atlantic in 2009, to the Germanwings flight 9525 crash in the Alps in 2015, the French investigators of the BEA (Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety) are called upon worldwide to determine the causes of air accidents. Line planes, helicopters, ultra-lights: BEA is investigating everything that flies. For the first time, they have allowed cameras to film their often confidential work. This documentary meets technicians and meteorologists, even ophthalmologists and acousticians, who are able to determine the causes of an accident from detailed details. It also follows the two-year search and recovery effort for an aircraft engine that went missing over the Greenland Ice Sheet.